Archive On 4
First broadcast from 20090110 to 20100315.
- The Archive Hour changed into this.
- It started off with the monday repeat being shorter than the original broadcast to allow for the Afternoon Reading.
| Title | First Broadcast | Repeated | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bremner On Bush - A Final Farewell | 20090110 | 20090112 | Rory Bremner considers the rhetorical evolution of George W Bush. Rory Bremner considers the rhetorical evolution of George W Bush, from gaffe-prone candidate to grandiose war president. He considers whether Bush grew to become an effective orator and who was responsible for writing the words he spoke and examines some of his key speeches and phrases. Featuring contributions from political commentators and former Bush speechwriters. |
| Nations Of The Cross - 1 - Arrivals And Departures | 20090117 | 20090119 | The area was Already changing before the bulldozers arrived. Alan Dein hears true stories from those who live around London's King's Cross station. Millions of us have passed through it but few of know anything about the turbulent lives and the history that is crammed in around London's King's Cross. Today it is being changed beyond recognition by massive redevelopment. For the past three years, Alan Dein and a team of oral historians have been capturing the voices of those who remember a King's Cross Already receding before the bulldozers arrived. |
| Nations Of The Cross - 2 - End Of The Line | 20090124 | 20090126 | Once it became a transport hub, King's Cross attracted those with nowhere else to go. Alan Dein hears true stories from those who live around London's King's Cross station. Long before the railways, King's Cross was an area known for licentiousness, poverty and despair. But once it became one of the capital's transport hubs it increasingly attracted the lost, the lonely and those with nowhere else to go. |
| Pinter On Air | 20090131 | 20090202 | Ian Smith, author of Pinter in the Theatre and a friend of the late playwright, rediscovers the vital role that a series of successful radio and television dramas played in making Harold Pinter's name. He draws on a recently released archive of letters written to Pinter by listeners and viewers of these plays. They strikingly reveal how audiences well beyond London's West End responded to the broadcasts, many of them written not for the stage but specially for radio or TV. Ian also uses Pinter's early revue sketches and a letter from Sid James to examine how Pinter's work was not just funny, but foreshadowed much mainstream British TV comedy, from Steptoe and Son to Smith and Jones. He explores the way in which BBC Radio's Third Programme nurtured the teenage Pinter's enthusiasm for culture and subsequently hired him as an actor and how, in the wake of the flop of his first major stage play at the end of the 1950s, it was BBC Radio that sustained him as a writer. Ian delves into the BBC archive to listen to the early Pinter classics which flowed from these commissions, such as A Slight Ache. He reunites some of the cast of one of Pinter's early hits, A Night Out, to find out what it was like working on one of the very first Pinter scripts. Finally, he examines how, in the 1960s, television repeatedly won Pinter an audience of millions for his work. He watches some of Pinter's original plays for TV, including Tea Party and The Basement, and hears from some of those most closely involved in making them. Ian discovers that these pieces allowed Pinter to push his highly original dramatic strategies to their limits, and how they were a vital part of his breakthrough as one of Britain's greatest dramatic writers. Featuring contributions from Sir Peter Hall, Barbara Bray, Michael Bakewell, Christopher Morahan, Dominic Sandbrook, Benedict Nightingale, Michael Rosen, Eileen Diss, Philip Saville, Auriol Smith, John Rye and Hugh Dickson. The role that radio and TV dramas played in making Harold Pinter's name. |
| The Book Burners | 20090207 | 20090209 | To mark 20 years since the fatwa was issued against Salman Rushdie over the publication of The Satanic Verses, Mike Wooldridge talks to those who took part in the protests and burned the book. When The Satanic Verses was published, one of the book burners, Inayat Bunglawala, was a second-year student at Queen Mary University in London. He, like many others, reasoned that the Thatcher government had banned Peter Wright's Spycatcher and had gone to court to prevent its distribution, so surely Rushdie's novel, which caused such offence to hundreds of millions of Muslims, deserved a similar fate? When, on the 14 February 1989, the Iranian Islamic leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie's death, the protestors were elated. London's Hyde Park saw 70,000 Muslims gather for what became one of the largest protests. Bradford was also the centre of much opposition. But 20 years on, do the young men who took part in the demonstrations and the book burning still believe that their actions were justified, and would they do it again? Reflections on the fatwa that was issued against Salman Rushdie in 1989. |
| Island Dreams | 20090214 | 20090216 | Poet Gwyneth Lewis explores the idea of the island and island life, and the ways in which it continues to capture the British imagination. She uses drama, talks and documentary from the BBC audio archive to illustrate its appeal, from reality TV programmes to Desert Island Discs and the Shipping Forecast, and also cites the many instances of island settings in classic literature, including Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, Peter Pan and Lord of the Flies. Including contributions from literary critic Dame Gillian Beer, historian Robert Colls, a group of people who tried to set up an island utopia in the 1960s and the very last man to leave the island of St Kilda in the Outer Hebrides. Gwyneth Lewis explores the idea of the island, and its appeal to the British imagination. |
| Agony | 20090221 | Jenni Murray presents a history of personal advice, from the mythical, kindly agony aunts of women's magazines to the public confessional of the radio phone-in. The advice column began life in the women's magazines. It was the role of the kindly, but mythical aunt to re-enforce the social codes of the day, dispensing jaunty, practical, nearly always morally serious advice to their readers. Radio brought a new outlet for those doling out advice. It started in the buttoned-up 1940s with paternalistic lectures from Charles Hill, the Radio Doctor (and later chairman of BBC) on subjects such as tummy trouble and melancholia and bloomed into the frank and sometimes shocking phone-ins. Today, the 'advice industry' has expanded from radio to TV, the internet and advice columns in the newspapers, where readers can offer their own comments. Throughout the history of agony we have moved from social etiquette to sexual etiquette in terms of the questions that are being asked, and agony aunts have both reflected and influenced trends. The increasing candour of the programmes reflects a parallel shift in British emotional engagement and the rise of therapy culture, which, some would argue, is not necessarily something to be celebrated. The programme tracks these developments, exploring the phenomenon of the agony aunt and examining how the way advice is delivered has changed to suit the times. Jenni Murray presents a history of personal advice, from the agony aunts to the phone-in. | |
| A Strong Song Tows Us - Another History Of English Poetry | 20090228 | 20090302 | Lee Hall, writer of Billy Elliot and The Pitmen Painters, uncovers a hidden history of English poetry. Stretching back to the Dark Ages and emerging in 1960s Newcastle, Lee reveals an alternative tradition of English poetry as the preserve of ordinary working people. Sunderland cork cutters, shipyard workers and pit men encounter Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg and Ezra Pound. And how a meeting between a 16-year-old schoolboy and one of the great modernists of English literature, Basil Bunting, contributed to the flowering of the north east as an international destination for the whole Beatnik generation. Lee Hall discovers an alternative poetry tradition as the preserve of ordinary people. |
| A Tibetan Odyssey: 50 Years In Exile | 20090307 | 20090309 | On the 50th anniversary of the 1959 uprising in Tibet, Isabel Hilton hears the stories of Tibetan communities in exile. She speaks to the Dalai Lama, as well as refugees in India and Britain, who recount their personal tales and discuss their hopes for the future. Isabel reflects on the journey made by the Dalai Lama's followers over the last 50 years and considers the challenges for these displaced people as they strive to preserve their culture and regain their autonomy. Isabel Hilton hears the stories of Tibetan communities in exile. |
| Radio Sales | 20090314 | 20090316, Radio Four 20100111 |  Radio presenter Brian Hayes examines some of the best and worst of independent radio - the adverts.He looks back over the last 80 years of advertising on radio in the UK, the rise and fall of the jingle, how ads have used humour and the changing voices of radio adverts. Brian also looks back to the earliest radio advertising in the UK - on Radio Luxembourg during the interwar period - which drew on expertise from the US and was remarkably sophisticated for its time. The programme features contributions from DJs who have relished their role of on-air salesmen, including Tony Blackburn. Radio presenter Brian Hayes examines the history of radio advertising in the UK. Brian Hayes looks back over 80 years of advertising on radio in the UK. Amid the changing fashions he finds some of the most finely-crafted, punchy, emotional and entertaining radio, as well as some of the most amateurish. Brian Hayes looks back over 80 years of advertising on radio in the UK. |
| Tell Me A Storycorps | 20090321 | 20090323 |  Writer Simon Garfield tells the tale of StoryCorps, the project created in the US in 2003 by radio producer David Isay which has seen thousands of ordinary Americans enter Storybooths to record their responses to the simple question, 'Tell me about your life'.Simon compares StoryCorps with traditional oral history and asks if, that now we all possess the means to record our lives, those recordings are still of value and worth keeping. |
| Beat Mining With The Vinyl Hoover | 20090330 | Broadcaster Toby Amies digs into the archives to discover the value and significance of old vinyl. He uncovers a network of dealers and buyers, supplying a community of 'crate diggers' and 'beat miners' and a world in which samples from records bought for a few pence in a car boot sale can provide the basis for a million-selling hit. Broadcaster Toby Amies digs into the archives to discover the significance of old vinyl. | |
| From Midpoint To Endpoint - Talking With John Updike | 20090404 | 20090406 | Mark Lawson traces the career of John Updike from 1969, after he had been pictured on the cover of Time magazine and brought to international recognition by his best-selling novel Couples, to a final interview recorded months before Updike's death in January 2009. Mark draws on his own interviews with Updike - including the one made in October 2008 which proved to he his last - appearances on programmes including Desert Island Discs and the writer's readings of his own stories and memoirs. Updike talks about writing, sex, death, God, golf, American presidents from Kennedy to Obama, 9/11 and changes in literary culture. Mark Lawson traces the career of late US novelist and poet John Updike |
| Carl Sagan - A Personal Voyage | 20090411 | 20090413 | Physicist and broadcaster Brian Cox presents a tribute to his science hero, Carl Sagan, the man who many people describe as the greatest populariser of science of all time. His landmark television series Cosmos was seen by more than 600 million people worldwide and inspired a generation of young scientists to regard the universe with wonder and awe. Physicist and broadcaster Brian Cox presents a tribute to his science hero, Carl Sagan. |
| For One Night Illegally - The History Of The Bootleg | 20090418 | 20090420 | Writer and broadcaster David Hepworth charts the story of secret recordings, artist out-takes and demo tapes that make up the world of bootleg recordings, from Bob Dylan's Great White Wonder in 1969 to the file sharing internet sites of the 21st century, via the Beatles, the Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Sex Pistols and Led Zeppelin. David also talks to contemporary artists including Ryan Adams who have come to embrace the bootleggers, and hears from bootleggers of the 1960s and 70s who pitted their wits against security guards, the Feds and the record companies to get their unofficial releases out to the public. A Bite Yer Legs production for BBC Radio 4. Writer and broadcaster David Hepworth charts the story of bootleg recordings. |
| Working For Margaret | 20090425 | 20090427 | Matthew Parris, who worked for Margaret Thatcher before becoming a political journalist, delves into the Brook Lapping archive to hear from some of her former staff, ministers, civil servants, speechwriters and advisors about what she was like to work for. Was she any gentler with her staff than she was with her Cabinet colleagues? Matthew finds out about the Margaret Thatcher that only her closest circle saw. A Brook Lapping production for BBC Radio 4. |
| Pete Seeger At 90 | 20090502 | 20090504 | Vincent Dowd celebrates the life and work of American folk singer and activist Pete Seeger, as he turns 90. Drawing on BBC archives and new interviews, Vincent explores Seeger's continuing efforts to improve the world through the power of song. He hears Seeger's views on a range of issues and his hopes for the future under the leadership of Barack Obama, at whose inauguration he performed. Featuring some of the musicians who have interpreted Seeger's songs, including Marlene Dietrich, Joan Baez and Bruce Springsteen, and an unplugged version of This Land is Your Land by Seeger himself. |
| John Barbirolli - Angel Of The North | 20090509 | 20090511 | James Naughtie remembers English conductor Sir John Barbirolli, in his own words as well as in the recollections of colleagues and through archive recordings. Barbirolli had Italian and French blood in his veins but he was a proud cockney who became a champion of English music. When he died in 1970, Britain lost a figure who seemed part of our musical life. Barbirolli is remembered affectionately for his work with the Halle Orchestra in Manchester with whom he forged a unique bond from 1942 onwards and brought new vigour and worldwide renown to the oldest professional orchestra in Britain. James chairs a discussion between Sir Mark Elder, current music director of the Halle, David Lloyd-Jones, conductor and founder of Opera North, and writer Andrew Farach-Colton. |
| A Laureate's Legacy - The Poetry Archive | 20090516 | 20090518 | Andrew Motion explores and tells the story of the proudest legacy of his time as Poet Laureate, The Poetry Archive - hundreds of poems, read by their authors and all available online, free to everyone. Motion began the Archive in 1999 with sound producer Richard Carrington, and it is still growing in size. It includes contemporary poets reading their work, including Seamus Heaney, UA Fanthorpe and Jackie Kay and historic recordings by poets including Hilaire Belloc, Siegfried Sassoon, WB Yeats and even Tennyson and Browning. As well as the poems there are sections for children and teachers, interviews with poets, poets in residence and useful information about genres, forms and metres. If you want to know what an anapaest is, or a pantoum, the Poetry Archive can help. Motion and Carrington talk about why they created the archive, and state that there is more to it than simply preserving poets reading their work. Motion develops his theme that poetry is primarily an aural art, and what this reveals. The poet's voice is fundamental: the windswept moor is in the voice of Ted Hughes; Charles Causley's Cornish accent and dialect are important. The sound of a poem is an aspect of its meaning. At the recording session when Carol Ann Duffy reads her book Rapture for the archive, Richard Carrington speaks about his role: not to coax a performance so much as to help the poets to be themselves. Andrew Motion and Richard Carrington lead us around the archive, playing gems that we might otherwise have missed. They talk, too, about what is missing, and appeal to people who might have recordings. For example, they do not know how Thomas Hardy, AE Housman and DH Lawrence sounded because as far as we know they never made recordings. But they might have, and one day they might turn up. Andrew Motion tells the story of the proudest legacy of his time as Poet Laureate. |
| The Many Lives Of Roald Dahl | 20090523 | 20090525 | Sophie Dahl looks at the life, writing and passions of her grandfather, the children's author Roald Dahl. By turns acerbic, funny, inventive and clever, what made him the writer he became? Sophie guides us through Dahl's Norwegian background but very British education, his early life in Washington and Hollywood and marriage to film star Patricia Neal. Then the personal tragedies and life at home in Buckinghamshire, looking after his children and writing the stories which would make him one of the most famous authors of the 20th century. We hear about the many lives of Roald Dahl through the voices of himself, his family and those who knew him throughout his 74 years. Sophie Dahl looks at the life of her grandfather, the children's author Roald Dahl |
| Lynne Truss - Did I Really Ask That? | 20090530 | Lynne Truss shares her personal treasure trove of interviews with world famous writers. Between 1980 and 1990, Lynne was a part-time arts journalist, meeting and interviewing many giants of the theatre, including Arthur Miller, Tom Stoppard, Simon Gray, Athol Fugard and Anthony Minghella. For over 20 years these cassettes gathered dust in her garage, but now Lynne airs them and finds out, with horror and humour, what her younger self was like as an interviewer, and what she learnt from meeting these great talents. | |
| Bill Buckley - Mr Right | 20090606 | 20090608 | Michael Portillo presents some of conservative writer, intellectual and wit William F Buckley's most glittering exchanges with the leading politicians and personalities of his day. Buckley helped to move conservatism from the outer fringes to the very centre of American political life. Waspish, provocative, sometimes infuriating but never dull, his weekly programme Firing Line became the world's longest-running TV show with a single host. From 1966 to 1999, everyone from presidents to poets, politicians and punks submitted to Buckley's weekly interrogations. A Paladin Invision production for radio 4. A selection of conservative writer and intellectual William F Buckley's finest moments. |
| The First A And R Man | 20090613 | 20090615 | Paul Gambaccini delves into EMI's Hayes archive to uncover the remarkable story of Fred Gaisberg, the music collector, technician and entrepreneur who brought recording to Britain over 100 years ago. Fred became the first man to record Caruso and the first to record the court music of the Chinese and Japanese Emperors. In a series of adventures in the early years of the 1900s, transporting his bulky apparatus - including an acid bath - across continents, he amassed hundreds of discs of indigenous music. Nearer home, he recorded the last ever castrato and made precious recordings of the great music hall and operatic stars. |
| When Courtney Met Chris | 20090620 | 20090622 | Courtney Pine talks to jazz trombonist Chris Barber about his life's work and how his initiative and enthusiasm for American blues music helped provide inspiration for a new generation of British musicians. Barber has been a professional jazz musician for almost 55 years. Along with the likes of Kenny Ball and Acker Bilk, he was an integral part of the 'trad jazz' boom in the 1950s which swept the dance halls of austere postwar Britain. However, while others stood still, Barber set about acknowledging the huge debt he and his fellow musicians owed to the legacy of American blues musicians, and engineered tours for artists including Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Muddy Waters, and Champion Jack Dupree. These visits gave emerging players like Eric Clapton and Van Morrison a chance to see their idols, and introduced the true stars of blues to a whole new generation. Van Morrison talks about the impact that Chris made on his music and on the British music scene as a whole, and his belief that Chris' contribution should receive wider recognition. Andy Fairweather-Low explains how rehearsing with Chris changed his whole appoach to music, and reveals the man's hidden talents as a racing driver. In a newly-discovered interview, Chris' ex wife, singer Ottilie Patterson, remembers stepping out with Big Bill Broonzy, the pride she felt in being compared to Bessie Smith and how she was chatted up by Muddy Waters, backstage in Croydon. Archive interviews with Chris' business partner Harold Pendleton reveal the moment when they knew the blues baton had been passed, as thousands of teenage girls rushed into their festival to see The Rolling Stones perform. Courtney Pine talks to jazz trombonist Chris Barber about his life's work. |
| An Unofficial Iris | 20090627 | 20090629 | Bidisha listens to archive interviews and dramatisations to revisit the life and work of novelist Iris Murdoch. Debate about Murdoch has continued since her death in 1999. Her legacy as a writer has been overshadowed by the publication of her husband John Bayley's memoir about her decline into Alzheimer's disease and the subsequent film adaptation, starring Judi Dench and Kate Winslet, and directed by Richard Eyre. Bidisha listens to archive conversations between Murdoch and writers AN Wilson, As Byatt and Susan Hill, and discovers a renaissance of interest in the writer as her emphasis on morality and goodness in a godless world seems to resonate today. Bidisha examines the life and work of fellow novelist Iris Murdoch |
| I Did Not Interview The Dead | 20090704 | 20090706 |  In 1946, psychologist Dr David Boder travelled across the American zones of war-torn Europe to record 120 interviews that remain unique. In Yiddish, Polish, German, Spanish and English, mostly Jewish young men, women and orphan children were asked to tell their personal stories of survival and loss in the world of Nazi concentration and death camps.Boder also gathered from them the songs of the ghettos.These recordings are arguably the first ever oral histories and the only contemporary interviews with people who had survived the worst but whose immediate fate was unkown. Alan Dein listens to those still making sense of their terrible experiences. |
| Walking On The Moon | 20090711 | 20090713, Radio Four 20091227 |  To mark the fortieth anniversary of the moon landing in July 1969, Buzz Aldrin relives the dangerous and dramatic moments of the final descent to the lunar surface. The programme features unique oral archive from NASA, broadcast on British radio for the first time, and the recollections of people from around the world who remember the historic event.Buzz Aldrin relives the dramatic moments of the final descent to the moon in 1969. |
| Soho | 20090718 | 20090720 |  The singer Suggs returns to London's Soho, where he spent much of his unconventional childhood and where his jazz singer mother still lives. He was introduced to the delights of the Colony Club as a six-year-old, and as a musician he continued to haunt the district. Recording on location and mining the BBC archive, Suggs investigates how this unique community, complete with red-light district and village school, functions today, and whether it is still, or indeed ever was, a source of inspiration or merely a creative vacuum.For decades, Soho was regarded as Britain's capital of sleaze and vice, but also a place where artists, writers, musicians and actors came to drink and philosophise. Tales of the area and its inhabitants abound, from painter Francis Bacon and George Melly at Muriel Belcher's infamous Colony Club to Jeffrey Bernard and Keith Waterhouse at the Coach and Horses and Dylan Thomas at The French House. Soho was the birthplace of British pop, with the skifflers, jazzers and early rock 'n' rollers all making their names in the coffee bars of the 1950s. It was also the home of refugees of every type, includng political dissidents, foreigners and homosexuals, from Casanova to Karl Marx, and Quentin Crisp to George Melly. Yet in the 1950s, a new phrase was coined: 'Soho-itis'. It was said that if you enter Soho you will never get any work done, and you will never, ever leave. Many books, poems, songs and indeed careers were washed away with drink, but some artists, musicians and writers did survive the late nights, the fights and the booze, and took great inspiration from the place. Suggs returns to Soho to find out how this unique community functions today. |
| On Northern Men | 20090725 | 20090727 |  Kay Mellor explores northern male stereotypes in fiction.Kay Mellor explores the way that northern English masculinities have been portrayed in British film and television, reconciling issues of blatant sentimentality with the real-life social parallels that inform the canon of the past 50 years. She examines fictional portrayals that have changed and diversified, yet stayed much the same in many ways. From the crucial age of the Angry Young Man, marked out in This Sporting Life, she considers the contrasts and similarities between the trapped northern masculine identities portrayed in Kes and Billy Elliot. Kay discovers that the disintegration of traditional northern male stereotypes in fiction leads us also to more diverse explorations, for example, the weak men in Coronation Street, Last of the Summer Wine and Keeping Up Appearances, British-Asian northern masculinities in East is East, the dysfunctional and proud Frank Gallagher in Shameless, and interpretations of homosexual masculinities in Queer as Folk and Jimmy McGovern's The Street. The programme traces the relationship between changing variables of social class, heroism, 'northernness' and fictional portrayals of masculinity in film and television, using supporting material from the radio archive, and remembers some of the humour and creativity that emerges from struggle and the portrayal of difficult lives. |
| George Blake - The Confession | 20090801 | 20090803 | Former Panorama reporter Tom Bower introduces the documentary he made in the late 1980s about double agent George Blake. For 18 years, Blake served as a trusted and senior MI6 officer. But secretly, in 1952, he became a double agent, betraying MI6 operations and personnel to the KGB. Over the course of nine years, at a critical period of the Cold War, he destroyed most of MI6's activities in Eastern Europe. 'I don't know what I handed over', he admitted, 'because it was so much'. |
| Under The Red Duster | 20090808 | 20090810 |  John Prescott MP went to sea as a waiter on Cunard Liners before entering Parliament. He recalls his own career from steward to Deputy Prime Minister.Via archive, poetry and new interviews, John also tells the little-known story of the British Merchant Navy. The tale starts from when its ships once carried half of all the cargo that moved around the world and its role in wartime, through to its near-collapse in the 1970s and 80s and the changes in law in recent years that have helped rebuild the fleet. A Malcolm Billings and Associates production for BBC Radio 4. |
| Meeting Myself Coming Back - 1 - Rev Jesse Jackson | 20090815 | 20090817 |  High-profile figures, in conversation with John Wilson, replay their own sound archive and use it as a basis for a re-examination of their lives.Rev Jesse Jackson, a witness to the murder of Martin Luther King and the first African-American candidate for US President, reflects on his life in sound drawn from a half-century of BBC archive. Being close to Dr King during the troubled years of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement was just one of the formative experiences for Jackson. Here he listens back to his younger self, recalls his thoughts at the time and applies to them the self-knowledge that comes from distance. Other episodes in his life include addressing the first black political rally, negotiating with President Assad of Syria over hostages, running twice for US president, witnessing the swearing-in of Barack Obama, and most recently defending one of America's most controversial black icons, Michael Jackson. |
| Meeting Myself Coming Back - 2 - Michael Grade | 20090822 | 20090824 |  High-profile figures, in conversation with John Wilson, replay their own sound archive and use it as a basis for a re-examination of their lives.Michael Grade reflects on the soundtrack to his life drawn through over 30 years of the BBC sound archives. From his earliest job as a sports writer on the Daily Mirror to his varied career as controller of BBC One, chief executive of Channel 4 and now in charge of ITV, his life has been a very public one. Coming from a showbusiness family, with an agent for a father and uncles Lew Grade and Bernard Delfont in theatre and television, Grade has seen at first hand how the language of variety and vaudeville can work. In his six-year career at the Daily Mirror, as 'Mike Grade', he had a sports column and learned how to work with the press. His move into TV came in the 1970s, and from the 1980s he was a major player in BBC television, becoming controller of BBC One. He hears the sound archive of his life and ponders what he has learned and how he has developed, from his earliest writings to his return to the BBC in 2004 and his subsequent move to ITV. Michael Grade, in conversation with John Wilson, replays his own sound archive. |
| Meeting Myself Coming Back - 3 - Clare Short | 20090829 | 20090831 |  High-profile figures, in conversation with John Wilson, replay their own sound archive and use it as a basis for a re-examination of their lives.Clare Short has spent her life in the public eye, never less than passionate and never short of opinions. From her first appearance as a community activist in the early 1980s, through to her announcement that she will be standing down as an MP at the next election, her career has always been controversial. What does she think now of her early causes: her opposition to Page 3 and support for the legalisation of cannabis? And what of those resignations? Was she really, as she claimed at the time, 'making a sacrifice to a higher purpose' by staying inside the Cabinet despite her opposition to the Iraq War? As Clare meets herself coming back over nearly 30 years of sound recordings, is she proud, pleased, or driven, as she says she often is, to think, 'Oh, shut up Clare', for her insistance on always speaking up, even when staying quiet might be a wiser choice? John Wilson takes Clare Short back through her life as captured in the BBC Archive. |
| Five And The Fascists | 20090905 | 20090907 |  In 1929 five leading European conductors - Toscanini, Klemperer, Furtwangler, Erich Kleiber and Bruno Walter - met at the Berlin Festival at the height of the Weimar Republic, shortly before Hitler took power. Robert Giddings explores the confrontation between creativity and Fascism through the decisions made by these five musical giants.Robert Giddings on the confrontation between creativity and Fascism in interwar Germany. |
| Agatha Christie's Life In Her Words | 20090912 | 20090914 |  Crime writer Val McDermid listens to recordings made by Agatha Christie which have never before been broadcast.A panel of guests, including dramatist Kevin Elyot, biographer Laura Thompson, archivist John Curran, who has recently deciphered Christie's notebooks, director Enyd Williams and writer Michael Bakewell, discuss their approach to dramatising her novels for TV and radio and the light that these recordings shed on Christie's working methods. |
| Scott Of Slimbridge | 20090919 | 20090921 |  From the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust centre in Gloucestershire, Frank Gardner reflects on the career of Sir Peter Scott - ornithologist, author, painter, sportsman, war hero and broadcaster, whose television programme Look ran for over 25 years.Born 100 years ago, the son of Scott of the Antarctic, he was dubbed the patron saint of conservation. He was the first to campaign for the preservation of endangered species and to warn against the destruction of natural habitats. A Ladbroke production for BBC Radio 4. Frank Gardner reflects on the career of ornithologist and broadcaster Sir Peter Scott. |
| Self On Ballard | 20090926 | 20090928 |  Will Self explores the imagination and work of writer JG Ballard, who he came to know in his final years. Will draws on the many telling interviews that Ballard gave throughout his working life and on Self's own tapes of his encounters with him.From his life of suburban anonymity, Ballard charted the realms of innerspace and the madness of the modern world with a cool eye and visionary prose. |
| In The Beginning Was The Nerd | 20091003 | 20091005 |  Stephen Fry recalls the unnecessary panic that surrounded the so-called Millennium Bug.Stephen Fry recalls how, in the build-up to the year 2000, the world prepared itself to face a terrifying scare - The Millennium Bug. Who or what was to blame for such an expensive and unnecessary panic? With the help of the BBC Archive, Stephen travels back to the dawn of the digital age to argue that a major cause was our attitude to the technology and the people we held responsible for it. A Testbed production for BBC Radio 4. |
| When Bailey Met Warhol | 20091010 | 20091012 |  Jerry Hall talks to photographer David Bailey about his relationship with Andy Warhol.Jerry Hall, formerly one of Andy Warhol's muses, interviews photographer David Bailey about his relationship to the pop artist and tells the story of the infamous television documentary Bailey made about Warhol in 1973. Temporarily censored in the UK, it caused the greatest national public row over art and censorship since the trial over the publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover. The relationship between Bailey and Warhol was also an encounter of styles: the visual cool of 1960s London met the playful irony of the New York art scene, with Bailey's East End smarts sometimes thwarted by Warhol's elusive musings and those of his Factory acolytes. |
| The Anniversary Anniversary | 20091017 | 20091019, BD20091225 |  Dominic Sandbrook explores the compelling appeal of the anniversary. How often on the radio, on television or in print is our attention enticed by the simple fact that an event, a birth or a death happened a year, or five or ten, fifty, even several hundred years ago?There is a huge category of archive material dedicated to particular happenings or personalities which would never have been produced without the prompt of an anniversary. Remembering war predates broadcasting, but in the past the remembering was cast in stone, unchanging even as the memories of those involved frayed and faded. In broadcasting, that increasing remoteness results in the memories being endlessly reworked with a different slant and attitude. Ten years after the end of Second World War, the response was limited but jovially triumphal. Sixty years on and there is a far greater energy in remembering and rediscovering, particularly of the details that didn't seem to matter at the time. A perfect example is The Radio Four series Coming Home. Dominic also looks at artistic, literary, sporting and musical anniversaries. In music there seems to be a constant stream of anniversary commemorations, fuelled by the recording industry. For example, there is the 200th anniversary of Mozart's death or the 250th anniversary of his birth; and, if that's not enough, then there are similar anniversaries for each of his operas. At the very heart of all this is the simple business of marking the turning of the years, best illustrated by the birthday, that most domestic of anniversaries. Dominic Sandbrook scrutinises our obsession with anniversaries. |
| Capering With Ken Campbell | 20091031 | 20091102 |  Ian Mcmillan explores the world of the actor and director Ken Campbell, who died in 2008.Campbell's acting credits included Fawlty Towers, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Brookside, Law and Order and In Sickness and In Health, as well as performing one-man shows. He also directed theatrical events, including the nine-hour Illuminatus trilogy, a 22-hour production of The Warp and Macbeth in pidgin English. His daughter, Daisy, gives Ian Mcmillan a tour of Ken's home in Essex, where he didn't have a bedroom and had a parrot run in every room. He also talks to Campbell's manager Colin Watkeys, theatre director Richard Eyre, fan and collaborator Ian Potter and fellow actors Julia Mckenzie and Jim Broadbent |
| This Is The Army Mr Jones | 20091107 | 20091109 |  John Barrowman tells the story of the morale-boosting US army show that toured the world.Actor and entertainer John Barrowman tells the story of Irving Berlin's groundbreaking army show, This Is The Army, that came to bomb-ravaged London in 1943 before setting out on a world tour that raised military morale from Glasgow to Guam. The show's choreographer, Robert Sydney, and Irving Berlin's daughter, Mary Ellin Barrett, recall how the show was put together and the effect it had in places as far afield as Washington DC and Tehran, via Bristol, Birmingham, Glasgow, London and the fiercest area of fighting in the south of Italy shortly after the British and American landings there. Also remembering the show are members of the audience in Birmingham, Glasgow and London, where a young airman by the name of Denis Norden was spellbound by the show at The Palladium. The programme also features archive recordings made especially for the BBC in the winter of 1943, including a performance from Berlin himself. |
| Radio Hollywood | 20091114 | 20091116 |  How the Lux Theatre brought the silver screen to the airwaves in an unlikely alliance.Sponsored by a well-known 'toilet soap', the Lux Theater brought the silver screen to the airwaves, with specially adapted versions of new Hollywood products including The Philadelphia Story, The African Queen and The Wizard of Oz. Professor Jeffrey Richards takes us back to the place where cinema and radio united and produced an unlikely lovechild. From its first production in 1935, The Legionnaire and The Lady with Clark Gable and Marlene Dietrich, The Lux Radio Theater strove to have the same stars as the films. Over its 19-year history, it boasted the biggest names in Hollywood - Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Frank Sinatra, Spencer Tracy and many more. Sometimes the original players were not available, so the Theater offered audiences a glimpse of an alternative universe, as listeners discovered what these films would have been like with different actors. On a few occasions the radio version boasted a more stellar cast, for instance when Cary Grant stood in for Montgomery Clift in I Confess. At the start of each show Cecil B De Mille offered 'greetings from Hollywood', gave a short introduction to the film and told listeners a little about the stars. Twenty-five minutes later, he would turn up in the interval for some 'movie news', which was a barely-concealed advertisement for Lux and its frothy lather, and would return at the end for an informal and, of course, unscripted chat with the actors, in which they would invariably reveal their preference for a well-known toilet soap. These productions were performed live with full orchestra, and the audience's reaction was often audible, which occasionally put the actors off their lines. They also had to be half an hour shorter, and were therefore much pacier than the originals, while retaining key dialogue - so phrases like 'this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship' and 'round up the usual suspects' are still present and correct in Casablanca. But being live presented its own problems, with stars sometimes falling ill the day before, or, on one occasion, arriving at the studio 10 minutes after transmission had begun. |
| Politics Between The Covers | 20091121 | 20091123 | From The West Wing to The Thick of It, politics lends itself to high drama. Politicians themselves often write thinly-disguised versions of their own experiences as fiction, and films and TV are awash with fictionalised versions of the political world. Does it really represent a truthful portrayal of the machinations of government, and to what extent can powerful fiction influence those in positions of power? Mark Lawson delves into the seamier side of politics to consider the fascinating line where fact meets fiction. Delving into the seamier side of politics to consider the line where fact meets fiction. |
| Lord Clark - Seeing Through The Tweed | 20091128 | 20091214 | Kenneth Clark is remembered as a tweedy patrician who lectured on the arts from a position of immense privilege. But Richard Weight argues that Clark was in fact a toff with a democratic mission, and that the BBC's Civilisation, first broadcast in 1969, was the culmination of a career that reveals much about 20th-century Britain. Richard Weight reassesses Kenneth Clark and his landmark BBC TV series, Civilisation. |
| The Turner Prize Turnaround | 20091205 | 20091207 |  As the Turner Prize reaches its 25th year, art critic Waldemar Januszczak considers its transformation from a widely criticised award to a much anticipated and often controversial annual spectacle. Januszczak looks back at the art and artists that have grabbed the headlines and investigates how the Turner Prize has influenced the appreciation of modern art in Britain, with millions now visiting Tate Modern.The programme includes new interviews with Turner Prize-winner Damien Hirst, Tate director Nicholas Serota and art critics Matthew Collings and Sarah Kent. Critic Waldemar Januszczak on the public's U-turn on the Turner Prize and modern art. |
| The My Lai Tapes | 20091212 | Robert Hodierne reveals the truth about the infamous My Lai massacre of 16 March 1968, based on the transcript of a Pentagon enquiry conducted by Lt General William Peers. The findings of the investigation were so uncomfortable for the US Military that they were suppressed. Some 400 hours of tape show that US soldiers raped and murdered hundreds of civilians in not just one but three villages in an orgy of killing that proved to be a turning point in the Vietnam War. Robert Hodierne reveals the truth about the infamous My Lai massacre of 16 March 1968. | |
| A Dog's Life | 20091219 | 20091221 | To mark the 75th anniversary of the foundation of the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, BBC Disability Affairs Correspondent Peter White examines the changing role of the working dog, from the early 1900s to their role in today's society, using extensive and sometimes previously unbroadcast archive. Perennially 'man's best friend', dogs are also now man's best colleague. From guide dogs to guard dogs, hearing dogs to healing dogs, Peter examines the ways in which we have become so dependent on canines. Over the years we have progressed from guide dogs to dual purpose dogs, to dogs that can detect imminent epileptic fits, smuggled drugs and explosive devices - even dogs that can do your washing. The programme features a mix of historical material, new interviews and previously untransmitted archive of the trainers, the owners and those that place their lives in the paws of their dogs. |
| A Laureate's Legacy - The Poetry Archive | 20091225 | Andrew Motion explores and tells the story of the proudest legacy of his time as Poet Laureate, The Poetry Archive - hundreds of poems, read by their authors and all available online, free to everyone. Motion's stint as Poet Laureate ended with predictable discussions about his successor and what he did or didn't do. But the lasting legacy of his laureateship and the great achievement of his tenure is his creation, with sound producer Richard Carrington, of the remarkable online Poetry Archive, begun in 1999 and growing. It includes contemporary poets reading their work, including Seamus Heaney, UA Fanthorpe and Jackie Kay and historic recordings by poets including Hilaire Belloc, Siegfried Sassoon, WB Yeats and even Tennyson and Browning. As well as the poems there are sections for children and teachers, interviews with poets, poets in residence and useful information about genres, forms and metres. If you want to know what an anapaest is, or a pantoum, the Poetry Archive can help. Motion and Carrington talk about why they created the archive, and state that there is more to it than simply preserving poets reading their work. Motion develops his theme that poetry is primarily an aural art, and what this reveals. The poet's voice is fundamental: the windswept moor is in the voice of Ted Hughes; Charles Causley's Cornish accent and dialect are important. The sound of a poem is an aspect of its meaning. At the recording session when Carol Ann Duffy reads her book Rapture for the archive, Richard Carrington speaks about his role: not to coax a performance so much as to help the poets to be themselves. Andrew Motion and Richard Carrington lead us around the archive, playing gems that we might otherwise have missed. They talk, too, about what is missing, and appeal to people who might have recordings. For example, they do not know how Thomas Hardy, AE Housman and DH Lawrence sounded because as far as we know they never made recordings. But they might have, and one day they might turn up. Andrew Motion tells the story of the proudest legacy of his time as Poet Laureate. | |
| Doctor Who - The Lost Episodes | 20091226 | 20091228 |  Shaun Ley investigates what happened to 108 missing episodes of Doctor Who from the 1960s, why the tapes were wiped and how dedicated fans hunted down copies of other episodes in film collections from Cyprus to New Zealand. And while we may have lost those early programmes, Shaun hears how home recordings ensured all the audio survived. |
| The New York '77 Blackout | 20100102 | An exploration of the blackout on 13 July 1977 that plunged a sweltering and near-bankrupt New York City into chaos as the lights went out at 9.27pm. Music stations switched to rolling news and the sound of store alarms was the prelude to a night of fear and unprecedented lawlessness. A Brook Lapping production for BBC Radio 4. An exploration of the blackout on 13 July 1977 that plunged New York City into chaos. | |
| Carry On Britain | 20100104 | Carolyn Quinn looks at the Carry On films and asks what they tell us about British society between the late 1950s and the late 1970s. Carolyn Quinn asks what the Carry On series of films tells us about British society. | |
| Mods! | 20100109 | Phil Daniels presents a look back at the Mod movement, exploring its beginnings in the Soho underground of the late 1950s through to the seafront clashes with the Rockers in the 1960s, and examining the Mods' influence on music, film, fashion and popular culture. A Brook Lapping production for BBC Radio 4. Phil Daniels presents a look back at the Mod movement of the 1960s. | |
| The Itv Story | 20100116 | 20100118 |  This is the story of how Yorkshire seems to have disappeared. In fact, it is not a single county that has vanished from the map - the territory that has gone missing also stretched across Lincolnshire and into north Norfolk.Of course, if you look at any road atlas of the UK, there is still a sizeable piece of land between The Pennines and the North Sea. What has gone, in fact, is the regional ITV company, YTV, which began broadcasting from new studios in Leeds on July 29th, 1968. One of ITV's unique features in previous decades has been its regional structure, which was especially strong in the north of England where Granada, Yorkshire TV and Tyne Tees provided the backbone of national programmes made from around the nation. Today however, ITV is no longer a collection of regional companies; Mark Lawson examines why by taking a look at the history of Yorkshire Television. Initially, Granada served the whole of the north of England but for 40 years, YTV was Yorkshire's very own station and gave its region a prominent voice in millions of homes all over the country. Yorkshire Television was a station run by local people who 'talked right'. It made the likes of Richard Whiteley, Les Dawson, Annie Sugden and Hannah Hauxwell household names and it became part of a regional revolution that provided ITV with a significant part of its output, from soap opera (Emmerdale), and drama (Flambards and Heartbeat) to hard-hitting, award-winning documentaries including Johnny Go Home and Rampton: The Secret Hospital. Sir Paul Fox, a former managing director at YTV, says: 'You can tell a Yorkshire man but you can't tell him much.' And it was this refusal to compromise on its own particular provincial flavour that characterised the YTV style. For many years, Yorkshire Television demonstrated a regional approach to broadcasting that was successfully duplicated across the network by other many other ITV franchise holders. Mark Lawson grew up in Yorkshire and has a keen understanding of the workings of the British television industry. Those contributing include Sir Paul Fox, Jeremy Isaacs (Director of Programmes at Thames in the 1970s and Chief Executive at Channel 4 in the 1980s), John Whiston (former Director of Programmes at YTV and now Creative Director of ITV Studios UK), Alan Whicker and Austin Mitchell MP. The history of independent television in the UK, told through the story of Yorkshire TV. |
| So Much Older Then | 20100123 | 20100125 | Journalist Katharine Whitehorn, now in her 80s, reviews archive recordings that span her lifetime in order to arrive at some conclusions about old age. How long should we work and what should we do when we retire? Does age make us wise or merely boring? Should a woman fight the effects of age with facelifts and high heels? And when is it time to go? An All Out production for BBC Radio 4. Veteran journalist Katharine Whitehorn reviews archive recordings that span her lifetime. |
| Flexible Friend Or Foe | 20100130 | 20100201 | How did a little sliver of plastic take over the world? Journalist Max Flint explores the arrival of the credit card into British life and the huge role it plays today. The credit card was launched by Barclays in the UK in 1966. The Barclaycard was marketed at first as a 'shopping card', rather than a credit card, to thwart the British public's resistance to getting into debt. Barclaycard's first on-screen ad was called Travelling Light; it was targeted at women and featured the famous Barclaycard Bikini Girl who, oblivious to the shocked looks of passers-by, is seen making her way down a busy shopping street buying clothes and records, wearing nothing but a lilac-coloured bikini and carrying her Barclaycard in the bikini bottom. The advert finished with the line, 'Barclaycard: all a girl needs when she goes shopping.' Barclaycard executives admit that the name of the first face of Barclaycard has now been lost in the mists of time. The Bikini Girl and subsequent marketing has now given rise to the biggest cause of personal bankruptcies in the UK. That first card is now accompanied by some 1,700 other credit cards in Britain alone, and we have the unenviable record as the world's most intensive credit card country, with 67 million cards for 59 million people. With the launch of the first card began a technological battle between fraudsters and card companies, and the war is yet to be won. The American credit companies invaded us in the mid-90's and goaded Britain into unheard-of levels of debt. The thrill of the till has created a spending spree which is untempered by all the warnings from the archive news clips in this programme, taken from over the last 40 or so years, all of which tell us all what we Already know - that this can't continue. Max Flint explores the arrival of the credit card into British life and its role today. |
| Open Sesame | 20100206 | 20100208 | Konnie Huq looks back at four decades of Sesame Street, the experimental American children's television show which mixed radical educational techniques with extraordinary subject matter and subversive humour. Konnie Huq looks back at four decades of Sesame Street. |
| Ajp At The Bbc | 20100213 | 20100215 |  Joe Queenan recalls the long and turbulent relationship between the BBC and the first television don, historian AJP Taylor.Taylor's broadcasting career spanned five decades, beginning on BBC radio and then switching to the new medium of television, where his unscripted lectures brought serious history out of the university lecture halls and into the living rooms of millions of people for the first time. His broadcasts were as provocative as they were popular, at one point arousing bitter condemnation in the House of Commons, and his relationship with the corporation was often far from cordial. It dropped the sulky don, as he became known, from the airwaves on numerous occasions - once for refusing to speak any further in a live discussion programme. For his part, Taylor campaigned vigorously for an independent competitor to the BBC, and frequently mocked it in the press. Still, the relationship served both well over the years, providing Taylor with the mass audience he craved and the BBC with many hours of entertaining and enlightening broadcasting from one of the greatest academics of his day. Queenan, a long-term admirer of Taylor, tells the story of the historian and the corporation through written and broadcast archives. The long and turbulent relationship between the BBC and historian AJP Taylor. |
| Please Give Generously | 20100220 | 20100222 | Fergal Keane examines the history of charity appeals and the relationship between charity organisations and the media. Be it a malnourished child in Africa, a neglected dog or a day centre desperately in need of new equipment, it seems that there is no end to the number of people, animals or organisations that could benefit from a charitable donation. And if charities can harness the power of the media with a hard-hitting advert, a celebrity endorsement or an emergency appeal, then it is likely that their cause will reap far greater financial rewards. Fergal charts the history of the relationship between charity and the media, and considers the way the message is conveyed, the impact of celebrity endorsement, the quality of charity programmes and the responsibility and risks to the media in encouraging us to make a donation. The history of charity and the media goes back to the earliest days of broadcasting. The BBC's first charity appeal was in 1923, when it broadcast an appeal on radio for the Winter Distress League, a charity representing homeless veterans of the First World War. The appeal raised 26 pounds. In 1927 the BBC set up the Appeal Advisory Committee, whose role, to this day, is to decide on the BBC's choice of charity partners and to oversee campaigns including The Radio 4 Appeal, Comic Relief and Emergency Appeals such as the Haiti Earthquake Appeal, which was broadcast recently. Commercial broadcasters have also played their part in raising money for charity. In 1988 ITV launched its own all-night charity appeal, in the guise of the ITV Telethon. The 27-hour TV extravaganza saw all of its regional broadcasters come together to raise money for disability charities across the UK and the programme was repeated again in 1990 and 1992. In 2009, Sky Sports ran an interactive red button campaign during the Champions League final so that viewers could donate to a David Beckham-endorsed campaign to raise awareness of malaria. Programme contributors: Diane Reid, BBC Charity Appeals Advisor Lucy Polson, UK Representative for the charity SOS Sahel Caroline Diehl, chief executive of the Media Trust Jenni Murray, broadcaster John Grounds, director of Child Protection Consultancy. Fergal Keane looks at the relationship between charity and the media. |
| Hurry Up Please, It's Time | 20100227 | 20100301 | From Falstaff at The Boar's Head to John Self at The Shakespeare in Martin Amis's Money, English literature and the pub are intertwined. It started in a pub - Chaucer's pilgrims setting out from The Tabard in Southwark - and has been waiting to be chucked out ever since. Robert Hanks presents an elegy for pubs in literature and an exploration of what the smoking ban, the gastro pub and the five quid pint are going to do to writing. Roberts Hanks explores the pub in literature. |
| Hate Against Hope | 20100306 | 20100308 | Alan Dein hears how London's East End Bangladeshi community forged new alliances to oppose racism in the 1970s and 80s. The East End had been a centre of racial struggle and opposition since the 1930s, when Oswald Mosely's Blackshirts had paraded through the then largely Jewish streets around Brick Lane. By the 1970s a new wave of predominantly Bangladeshi immigrants faced racism again from the National Front and its sympathisers. As provocation and attacks increased, this community made new alliances with local anti-fascist activists, culminating in large-scale movements such as Rock Against Racism. Once again Brick Lane and the streets beyond became a battleground. How the anti-racist struggles in London's East End in the 1970s and 80s relived the past. class="blq-clearfix"> |
| Leaders Under The Lights | 20100313 | It's 50 years since Vice President Richard Nixon and Senator John F Kennedy made history with the first ever presidential TV debate. The idea was quickly adopted around the world. But how much do voters really learn from these encounters, and do they ever make the difference between winning ald losing? The BBC's political correspondent Reeta Chakrabarti unearths some memorable moments from the archives and talks to politicians, television producers, academics and journalists about the heated negotiations, meticulous preparation and sometimes painful gaffes which have had millions glued to their sets at election time. She also asks what Britain's party leaders can learn, as they prepare to face each other on TV for the first time. Reeta Chakrabarti unearths some memorable moments in presidential TV debates. | |
| Leaders Under The Lights | 20100315 | Reeta Chakrabarti unearths some memorable moments in presidential TV debates. | |
| A Dog's Life |  | ||
| Carry On Britain |  | ||
| Flexible Friend Or Foe |  | ||
| Mods! |  | ||
| Open Sesame |  | ||
| So Much Older Then |  | ||
| The New York '77 Blackout |  | ||
| With God On Our Side |  |